Tuesday, July 20, 2010

If at first you don't succeed...

Ok, so you can't win them all. I was watching Food Network, and Tyler's Ultimate came on featuring a "natural red velvet cake". It was really a cake made with beets. Now the beets in our garden are ready to be pulled, and I was stressing a bit trying to think what I could make with all of them so I was really interested in trying the cake.

Tonight is my book club, and as luck would have it I was in charge of dessert (don't you love the timing?) so this afternoon I pulled out some beets and got to work. I saved the greens and stems for dinner tonight (the boys are having a stew with sausage, greens, lentils and carrots over some cracked wheat). Everything went together well, and then it was time to cook. The recipe says 25 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean, but after 40 minutes I called it quits and pulled the cakes to cool. The cakes taste okay (maybe a tad too sweet), but the texture seems a bit gooey. Maybe next time I try a little less brown sugar, and a little more flour. It will have to wait though because I just saw a recipe for chocolate zucchini cupcakes -- yum...